


Welcoming Heartbeat

by sparxwrites



Series: Lifelines [2]
Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Body Horror, Cannibalism, Gen, Gore, Ridgephos if you squint, Temporary Character Death, Voltz AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-23
Updated: 2014-08-23
Packaged: 2018-02-14 09:27:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2186517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Xephos has never seen Ridge with anything other than a gap-toothed smile, any expression other than looking terrifyingly cheerful in the face of anything the world has managed to throw at him. He’s still smiling now, but only in the most technical of senses – it’s more of a baring of teeth, sharp and white and ready to tear the throat out of something, anything.</p>
<p>It’s… somehow even less comforting than his normal smile. “What <i>happened</i> to you?” asks Xephos, faintly.</p>
<p>(In which Ridgedog has a bit of a problem, and comes to Xephos for 'help'.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Welcoming Heartbeat

The nuclear bunker is creepy at night.

Perhaps creepy is the wrong word. It’s solid, well lit, has enough machines running in it and animals around it that it isn’t eerily silent. But the ceilings are high and the concrete echoes, and the lack of windows make it feel like the walls are pressing in.

“Poor design skills,” mumbles Xephos to himself, shaking his head as he checks over his shoulder for the hundredth time that night – he keeps hearing the low hiss of a creeper, the scratch of a spider, something that might be the shuffle of a zombie.

He feels eyes on the back of his neck, but when he turns there’s nothing there. Either they have a rat problem, or he’s losing his goddamn mind in this godforsaken wilderness they’ve all dragged themselves into.

Possibly both.

He turns back to the metallurgic infuser, slams a hand against the side of the solid metal box and listens to something rattle inside it. Hissing out a noise of displeasure, he grabs a wrench off the top of it and starts taking off one of the side panels. The thing’s been playing up for a solid week now, and he’s already fixed three things wrong with it without having found whatever is responsible for the rattling.

Behind him, there’s another hissing-scratch noise, louder than the others, and the sound of feet against concrete. The back of his neck itches.

Usually, he’d assume it was Lalna, except the scientist usually hums or talks to himself as he works, and is – hopefully – in bed and asleep. “For the-” Xephos mutters, spins around to reassure himself that whatever mob he thinks is there is all in his imagination – and then strangles a yell in his throat at the figure that’s just suddenly _there_.

For a second, it’s Ridgedog, but also _not_ Ridgedog – there’s a dirty, lightless brightness to him that makes Xephos’ eyes ache, ragged-edged and spilling endless void from the cracks in it. He looks _wrong_ , inhuman, but even the wrongness of him looks wrong. As if he’s broken, somehow.

Then there’s the sense of the world pulling together, of _something_ sliding back where it had previously been peeled away, and Ridgedog comes back into focus. It’s no longer void he’s spilling, but blood, congealing under his nose and crusted in the dangling curl of his hair. There’s a bruise across one cheek, creeping up towards his eye, and the bridge of his nose is split in a thick line of bloodied, peeled-back skin.

He looks _livid._

Xephos has never seen Ridge with anything other than a gap-toothed smile, any expression other than looking terrifyingly cheerful in the face of anything the world has managed to throw at him. He’s still smiling now, but only in the most technical of senses – it’s more of a baring of teeth, sharp and white and ready to tear the throat out of _something_ , anything.

It’s… somehow even less comforting than his normal smile.

“What _happened_ to you?” asks Xephos, faintly, dropping the wrench he was holding in shock and hardly noticing as it clatters to the floor by his foot. Ridgedog is fastidious about his appearance, ordinarily, but his clothes are crumpled and out of place, hair a tangled, bloodied mess. It’s slightly frightening, seeing him in such disarray, like some universal constant that’s suddenly changed.

Ridgedog blinks, comes back to himself and finally seems to see Xephos. “Kirindave,” he hisses, the tight anger in his voice enough to make Xephos flinch – he doesn’t recognise the word, isn’t sure whether it’s a name or a curse or something else, but if it’s enough to inconvenience Ridgedog then he hopes it’s something a long, long way from here.

Fingers twitching for a sword – Ridge is generally not _too_ much of an enemy, but there’s a lack of control to him that has Xephos on edge – and nerves singing with how wrong this all feels, Xephos inches forward. “Are you… okay?”

“Yes! No. No.” There’s a bright, almost manic edge of his voice for a second, and then he pulls himself together – eyes closing as he inhales slowly, deliberately, the sense of _something_ in the air pulling itself tighter around him where it had previously been spilling out.

“I need something,” he says, eventually. Though his voice is steady again there’s a new, terrifying _gravity_ to his eyes when he opens them. “Can I have it?”

Xephos shivers, without really knowing why. No matter how many times he feels it, the tangible _otherness_ that occasionally surrounds Ridgedog is still enough to make his skin crawl.

“What is-” he starts, cuts off as Ridgedog stumbles forward with a sudden jolt, his usual fluid grace gone as he braces a forearm across the top of Xephos’ chest and shoves him against the wall.  
“I _need_ something,” he says again, louder, something that Xephos would call desperation on anyone else edging into his tone. “ _Will you give it to me._ ”

It’s not a question this time – not quite a demand, either, something closer to almost ritual. Xephos swallows against the pressure across his collarbones, licks his lips and fights the urge to try and protect his throat and vital organs. “Yes,” he says, quietly. “Whatever you need, Ridge, I’ll-”

He never gets to finish the sentence. Ridgedog’s arm is still across his shoulders, holding him pinned to the wall with uncomfortable, _unnatural_ strength, and then there’s a hand on his chest, and then-

There’s a hand _in_ his chest.

It takes a second for him to process what the wet, crushing pain that suddenly narrows his world down to a red haze is. A second to process the feel of his ribs splintering, muscle giving way, lungs being pushed aside by the intrusion, and he can’t even find the breath to scream.

“Ridge-” he manages, and his words are blue-blood-wet and strangling somewhere in his throat with the betrayal of it. He brings a hand up, scratches at the steel of Ridgedog’s skin and curls shaking, useless fingers around a wrist dripping in his own blood. “Ridge, why-”

He doesn’t manage any more words after that.

There’s no regret on Ridge’s face as he hauls his hand backwards, fingers curled into a fist, and watches as Xephos’ corpse crumples to the floor like a broken rag doll. “Thank you, friend,” he murmurs, drags his free hand through the mess that is his hair to add streaks of blue to the crimson already dried into it.

He opens his other hand to reveal the soft warmth of Xephos’ heart.

It’s softer, more tender than a human heart; a lot more tender than the hearts of the villagers he occasionally uses if needs must. For a second he simply runs a thumb over the bloody-slippery surface of it, digs curious nails into it to test the way it gives beneath pressure. They leave crescent marks on the vaguely blueish organ, send more cobalt blue blood oozing over his knuckles and running down his wrist in rivulets.

“Huh,” he murmurs, blinks curiously – and then takes a bite out the soft flesh, smearing blood across his lips and chin.

It _tastes_ different to a human heart, too, less coppery and with a strange edge of something almost citrus. He takes another bite, and another, devours the whole raw thing in three greedy mouthfuls – throat clenching around the barely-chewed chunks as he swallows, exhaling pleasure in a low hum. It stains his teeth blue, and he licks the blood off his fingers with a careless tongue that seems, for a second, to be just slightly too long to be human.

It’s _delicious._

The energy of the sacrifice races through what counts as his bloodstream like a drug, brilliant and fierce. It wraps around him, strong and fierce and magnificent, pushes the void back inside him and knits the sheets of light back together from the damage Kirindave inflicted to hold it at bay. Ridgedog sighs, rolls his shoulders and lets his grin widen back to its normal sparkling proportions as the panic lifts with the return of his full powers.

Last to be fixed is the human shell he wears, the edges of too-perfect porcelain skin smoothing back together, bruises erased like smudges on paper and blood crumbling away like dust. His clothes straighten, the creases falling out, and he drags a hand through his hair to pull it back to its usual perfection.

For a second, he’s silent, luxuriating in the rush of his hit, in the jittery hyperactivity that makes him curl his fingers into fists and then open them again, makes him shake his head and _giggle_ at the buzz of it all. “Excellent,” he says, repeats it because he likes the way the word echoes with the power he can’t quite keep from spilling over. “ _Excellent_. Much better.”

Eventually, the dead body still at his feet catches his attention.

“Oh, right,” he says, hopping from one foot to another before forcing himself into stillness, clapping his hands together and smiling at the small crackle of power that jumps between them like a static shock. “Xephos. Should _probably_ fix that.” He rubs his palms together, feels the static grow between them and raise the hairs on his arms, and then crouches to rest one on Xephos’ forehead and one over the hole where his heart used to be.

The fixing is draining, especially since he’s working on a corpse. Xephos is complicated enough alive, non-human physiology so incredibly _fiddly_ to deal with, but dead things resist change with an immutability more stubborn than even obsidian. It takes energy, more than he’d like, to close the hole in Xephos’ chest and regrow his heart, to clean the stone around him and repair his clothes, but he manages.

If he’s honest, it’s good for him, draining off the jittery edge to allow him a modicum of calm and focus. Finished, he pauses; catches his breath and admires his handiwork on the restored body slumped against the now-clean wall, and smiles widely.

“Time to wake up, Xephos,” he says, and _breathes_.

The revival itself lacks drama – he feels Xephos’ heart restart, a _thump-thump-thump_ pulse sharp and rabbit-fast in his chest, sees Xephos’ eyes open luminous and blue in the darkness, and there is _life_ – but Xephos’ reaction certainly does not. He chokes, bolts forward from the wall to grab at his chest, ends up hunched over his own knees with his fingers curled tight in the fabric of his coat as he whimpers into the air and tries to remember how to breathe.

Ridgedog isn’t quite sure what to say. “Shh, shh,” he tries, vaguely, a half-hearted attempt to console the gasping mortal curled double at his feet. “Don’t be dramatic about it, Xephos. You’re fine.”

His reassuring words don’t seem to calm Xephos in the slightest.

“You- _killed_ me!” manages Xephos, words more of a ragged inhale than anything as he scrambles to his feet, gropes for the long-abandoned wrench on the floor and clutches it close to his newly-remade chest as if it would work as a weapon. As if _anything_ would work as a weapon against Ridgedog, with the brilliant fizz of power running so wild through his body.

Ridge laughs. “You’re alive, aren’t you?” he asks, shrugging one careless shoulder. Now the crisis is over and dealt with, he’s back to reckless and smiling and cruel. Back to being amused by how prone the mortals are to flapping and flailing and panicking.

A small part of him feels guilty for what he did; for at the very least not taking the pain away, for letting Xephos slowly drown in the blood filling his lungs and being able to feel every last desperate, rattling inhale.

Most of him doesn’t care. After all, he brought Xephos back, didn’t he?

Xephos is still trembling, still looking at Ridge like he’s some kind of monster. Belatedly, Ridgedog realises that he still has blueish blood smeared over his mouth, drying streaks of it down his forearms – that he had only cleaned his own blood off, not Xephos’. With a thought, that’s cleared too, Xephos flinching at the suddenness of the action and the restoration of Ridgedog’s china-doll flawlessness.

When Xephos still doesn’t calm, Ridgedog’s temper frays a little. “Get a hold of yourself,” he says, shaking his head disappointedly. “I’ve killed you before and you never whined _this_ much.”

There’s a second’s pause as Xephos tries to process this, tries to come up with some coherent response that will make sense in the world of Ridge-logic, which seems to operate differently to normal, human morality. “You’ve never _shoved your hand into my chest_ before,” he points out eventually, a little defensive, but some of the tension eases out of his shoulders, his hands no longer quite white-knuckled around the wrench.

“True.” Ridge shrugs, quirks one corner of his mouth up in an expression that could either be apologetic or a non-verbal equivalent of _oops_. “I’ve never needed to do that before, though.”

Xephos grumbles quietly, mutters something that sounds like, “Wouldn’t put it past you to do it for fun,” which is really rather hurtful, and then sighs. “Are you okay now, though?” he asks, dragging a hand through his hair.

Ridgedog spreads his arms wide, grins at being forgiven – if only just. “Good as new,” he says, spins a dramatic twirl on one heel and resists the urge to pout when Xephos rolls his eyes. “Mostly, anyways.”  
“Good.” For a long moment, Xephos can’t think of anything else to say. He chews on his lip, inhales, exhales, and then finally gathers up the courage to ask what he wants. “You said-” he hesitates again, not sure if he’s overstepping his boundaries. “Before you… killed me, you mentioned… something. Who- _what_ is Kirindave?”

He knows he’s overstepped the moment Ridgedog’s expression darkens slightly, the smallest of creases forming between his brows. “Something for me to worry about, and you to forget about,” he says, quietly, and there’s no mistaking the finality in his tone. “Drop it, Xephos.”

“But-” tries Xephos, hopelessly.

“I said, drop it.” Ridgedog smiles, but it’s the same one as before – cold and predatory and full of teeth, not remotely comforting. “I’m handling it.” His eyes catch Xephos’ for a second before he spins on his heel again, lets his coat flare around his ankles as he disappears in the space between one blink and another.

“Didn’t look like you were,” mutters Xephos, a little sulkily, before sighing. “You’re welcome, I guess,” he says to the spot where Ridgedog had so recently been standing, touches a hand over his heart to check it’s actually beating. “…Be careful, friend.”

The steady pulse of his heart beneath his fingers is both reassuring and, strangely, not.

There’s a shuffling somewhere to the side of him and he whirls around, raises his wrench in poor defence – he needs to stop leaving his sword places that aren’t strapped to his back, Notch _damn_ it – and then relaxes when a familiar goggles-topped head pokes around a corner.

Xephos sighs, counts to ten to control his temper, and then speaks. “Lalna,” he says, very calmly, “what the _hell_ are you still doing up.”

“Ah, just- this and that, you know?” says Lalna, trying and failing to look remotely innocent. The rest of him slowly sidles round the corner, too, and he frowns curiously at the wrench in Xephos’ hands, at the singing lines of tension still written all over his work-partner’s body. “Were you going to try and brain me with the wrench? Because that’s not really a very good weapon.”

“I- what? No!” There are so many things wrong with those few simple sentences that Xephos doesn’t know where to start. He’s not _entirely_ sure he has the patience to deal with Lalna’s special brand of insanity right now, if he’s honest. “I was just trying to… fix some stuff.” He pauses, remembers _this and that_ is Lalna-code for _things you wouldn’t approve of_ , and squashes the brief flare of panic that runs through him. “Please tell me you weren’t messing around with the reactor at this time of the night.”

Lalna giggles, nervously. “Uh. I _could_ , but that would be lying. So I’m not going to.”

Groaning, Xephos drags a hand down his face and resists the urge to actually try and brain Lalna with the wrench. “Go to bed, Lal,” he says quietly, despairing. “ _Please_.” It’s bad enough that neither of them are _really_ qualified to be doing anything like this – that neither of them have more than cursory experience with computer science and nuclear physics and electronics – without them being sleep deprived and Lalna doing _anything_ unsupervised.

“We don’t have beds yet,” Lalna reminds him, holds up his hands in surrender when Xephos makes a noise that’s closer to a growl than a groan and tightens his grip around the wrench. “Okay, okay! I’ll go- I don’t know, use some uranium as a pillow or something.”

He’s gone before Xephos can process that he might mean that literally.

For a second, Xephos considers running after him, stopping him and making him an actual bed just to make sure he won’t – but then he remembers this is Lalna, and even if he had an actual bed he might use uranium as a pillow because he lost his goddamn mind a long time ago and doesn’t seem to miss it all that much. He decides that if Lalna wants a bed _that_ badly he can bloody well make one himself.

After everything that’s happened this evening, Xephos’ patience has been worn down to practically non-existent.

Easing his grip on the wrench and holding it as a tool again rather than a weapon, Xephos decides to leave Lalna to sweet dreams and possible radiation poisoning and get on with finally, _finally_ maybe fixing the metallurgic infuser.

He should sleep too, he knows, but if he was restless before it’s nothing to how he feels now; paranoid and twitchy, restless.

“Kirindave,” he murmurs to himself as he goes back to prying the panel off the corner of the infuser, the word foreign on his tongue. Ridgedog told him to drop it – and whatever it is, it was bad enough to send Ridge running injured and with his tail between his legs, which should be an indication to leave it well alone – but he can’t help it. Can’t help the curiosity like a discontented cat that settles in his mind. “What _is_ Kirindave?”

_Something_ prickles down his spine at the word; an itch like static electricity across the back of his neck, like lightning through his bones. He chews on his lip against the feeling of eyes on him, the feeling that somewhere, somehow, behind his back he’s being _watched_.

This time, he doesn’t turn around.

**Author's Note:**

> (i could have contributed something useful to this fandom – i was working on cutesy sjips things for a friend – and instead i wrote ridge eating a heart. hey ho. fun fact for those who care: this was initially titled “holly makes a positive contribution to the yogs fandom”. current title is adapted from lyrics from the song "lifeline" by imogen heap.)


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